With
half a season left to fill following the demise of The Colgate Comedy Hour,
NBC quickly cobbled something together. Demonstrating an originality unparalleled
in the history of television, they decided to call it The NBC Comedy Hour.
The stated intent was to provide
"top comedy favorites and rising young comic discoveries, in sketches, monologues,
black-outs, gags, songs and dances...60 fast, funny minutes featuring the new,
the original, the unexpected."

Despite
an impressive cast, the program just wasn't very funny. TV Guide found
it "a weak and woebegone show." Variety stated bluntly, "A more poorly
conceived, routined and paced outing would be difficult to imagine."

Baseball
star Leo Durocher, hired several month earlier as an NBC vice president (presumably
in a consulting role), was inexplicably assigned to host the first three episodes.
After he and successor Gale Storm failed to make a dent in the ratings, NBC gave
up, reverting to the "different star each week" format, and allowed
the program to die quietly. Lasting
barely five months, The NBC Comedy Hour was replaced by The Steve Allen
Show on June 24, 1956.

Series
#

Season
#

Airdate

Host
& Guests

001

1-01

1/8/1956

Host: Leo Durocher Guests: Bob
and Ray, Pat Carroll, William Frawley, Paul Gilbert, Ming and Ling, Jonathan Winters,
Henny Youngman, George Liberace, Ina Ray Hutton, Gordon Jenkins and his Orchestra
Announcer: Hy Averback Note: Variety warned, "If NBC has serious
ambitions in translating Sunday 8 to 9 into a major competitive showcase, it's
inconceivable that the network could have actually blueprinted this Comedy
Hour the way it played. Even summer replacement stanzas in such a formidable
'cream of the evening' slotting have made greater pertentions toward qualitative
programming."